Arequipa

     Last week Finn and Sam had Thursday and Friday off for Semana Santa so we decided to spend the long weekend in Arequipa, a city of a million inhabitants and Peru's second largest city.  It's trademark is El Misti, a dormant volcano, that dominates the skyline.  In reality, the skyline is dominated by 3 dormant or extinct volcanoes giving me the impression of living next door to 3 Mt. Shastas.

The three are named Chachani, El Misti and PichuPichu.  They are frequently draped in clouds and not visible.  Indeed, we walked around for 2 days and I could not understand all the hype about the mountains and then on the third day the skies opened and the mountains were hard not to see.  Really quite a beautiful backdrop.
     Arequipa is called the "white city" because much of the original city was constructed of "sillar" a whitish volcanic stone deposited by the neighboring volcanoes.  Stone carving reached its height here in the 17th century as evidenced by the work on La Compania, a Jesuit church just off the Plaza de Armas, the center of the city.  It's still a gathering place for Arequipenos.  There were a few tourists in evidence but the majority of the denizens were locals and of a much more indigenous nature than where we live in Lima.  Lots of people on the streets, lots of activity and even a great Last Supper Thursday night street celebration thrown in.

    The boys are generally pretty good about participating in adult-inspired tourism and we like to reciprocate with some child-inspired activities.  This led us to what turned out to be our highlight of Arequipa--a horseback ride up the Chili River Valley.  Jaime saddled up some handsome Peruvian paso horses and up the valley we rode.  To the right of the trail the rocky, dry ridge rose precipitously. On the left the valley opened up onto 1000 year old terraces still worked by hand.  Along the trail the old water courses were still delivering water to the plots below.  It was explained to me that those in control of the bottom terraces are the lucky ones.  Seems the area is full of rocks, great for building retaining walls for terraces, but not so good for farming.  The soil for farming has been carried up by bucket from the river for 1000 years and those at the top spend most of their time hauling soil while those below get to grow something.
We are now back in Lima and daily life.